had rather stay in a sick
room and set up with a boy, than to take a girl to the 4th of July,"
said the grocery man, as he took a brush and wiped the saw dust off some
bottles of peppersauce that he was taking out of a box. "You didn't
have any trouble with the girl, did you?" "No,--not with her," said
the boy, as he looked into the little round zinc mirror to see if his
eyebrows were beginning to grow. "But her Pa is so unreasonable. I think
a man ought to know better than to kick a boy right where he has had a
pack of firecrackers explode in his pocket. You see, when I brought the
girl back home, she was a wreck. Don't you ever take a girl to the 4th
of July. Take the advice of a boy who has had experience. We hadn't more
than got to the Soldier's Home grounds before some boys who were playing
tag grabbed hold of my girl's crushed-strawberry polonaise and ripped it
off. That made her mad, and she wanted me to take offense at it, and I
tried to reason with the boys and they both jumped on me, and I see the
only way to get out of it honorably, was to get out real spry, and I got
out. Then we sat down under a tree, to eat lunch, and my girl swallowed
a pickle the wrong way, and I pounded her on the back, the way Ma does
when I choke, and she yelled, and a policeman grabbed me and shook me,
and asked me what I was hurting that poor girl for, and told me if I did
it again he would arrest me. Everything went wrong."

[Illustration: Fourth of July misadventures 178]

"After dark somebody fired a Roman candle into my girl's hat, and set it
on fire, and I grabbed the hat and stamped on it, and spoiled the hair
her Ma bought her. By gosh, I thought her hair was curly, but when the
wig was off, her hair was as straight as could be. But she was purty,
all the same. We got under another tree, to get away from the smell of
burned hair, and a boy set off a niger chaser, and it ran right at my
girl's feet, and burned her stockings, and a woman put the fire out for
her, while I looked for the boy that fired the niger chaser, but I did'nt
want to find him. She was pretty near a wreck by that time, though she
had all her dress left except the polonaise, and we went and sat under a
tree in a quiet place, and I put my arm around her and told her never
to mind the accidents, cause it would be dark when we got home, and
just then a spark dropped down through the trees and fell in my pistol
pocket, right next to her, where my bunch of fire c